Singapore Pledges to Use AI to Protect Workers’ Jobs
Singapore is benefiting from the rapid growth of artificial intelligence. Its prime minister wants to make sure its people are as well.
That’s according to a report Saturday (Aug. 8) from Bloomberg News, citing a National Day message from Prime Minister Lawrence Wong that day ahead of the country’s 61st year of independence.
He said that Singapore’s government is using AI to ensure more productivity and better jobs for people concerned about their livelihoods. Wong added that the city-state’s leadership is examining its approach to industry and trade, and ways to boost its competitiveness.
“New breakthroughs are creating opportunities that were unimaginable just a few years ago, even as they raise new challenges and questions,” he said. “We cannot stand still while others move ahead. But neither should we accept every new technology uncritically. Singapore will embrace these advances on our own terms.”
His comments come as business leaders are scaling back some of their earlier concerns about AI-related job losses.
A report last month by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) cited a survey by EY-Parthenon showing a decrease in the number of CEOs who think AI will lead to major job losses, from 46% in January 2025 to 20% in May.
“They may have noticed that the labor market is genuinely not changing (i.e., imploding) as rapidly as they expected,” said David Autor, a professor of economics at MIT, told WSJ. “They may have realized it was simply bad business to say that your great new product will destroy the economy.”
In addition, a study by payments FinTech Ramp and workforce-intelligence firm Revelio Labs found that companies making the largest AI investments expanded their staffing levels by around 10%. As PYMNTS wrote in June, the main pattern emerging at companies such as Google, Box and IBM isn’t displacement.
“It’s a new organizational layer sitting between foundation models and business operations, staffed by roles that require both technical depth and the judgment to make AI useful inside a specific enterprise context,” that report said. “That layer didn’t exist three years ago. It’s now one of the fastest-growing parts of the labor market.
Meanwhile, research from PYMNTS Intelligence’s Wage to Wallet collaboration with Ingo Payments and WorkWhile, found that only 40% of front-line and hourly workers in the Labor Economy believe they could find comparable employment if displaced because of AI.
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